Michigan

Oganist returns in concert after rehab stint

If there's one thing 90-year-old Rupert Otto loves more than teaching piano, it's opening his Chelsea home for free organ recitals.

So when he ended up in the hospital after falling off his treadmill, Otto could think of only one thing.

"His goal from the minute I met him was to get back to playing the organ and teaching his students," said Dr. Mark Pinto, a Chelsea orthopedic specialist who treated Otto.

Pinto said it's unclear how long Otto had been on the floor unconscious and dehydrated when he was found that January day. Otto apparently dislocated his shoulder while falling, then crawled to another room and collapsed unconscious until his Ann Arbor News carrier noticed his papers piling up.

The former Pioneer High School teacher spent a week in the hospital and nearly four months in rehab before coming home on May 1. On May 3, some of his piano students held a big 90th birthday party for him in his home's spacious music room, where he gives concerts to groups who've signed up and reserved a time.

Bev Richards of Ann Arbor attended one of Otto's concerts a couple of years ago at the invitation of a friend.

"He sat down and played for about two and a half hours," she said. "Honest to God, it was like opening the book to the 1950s when I roller-skated to organ music. ... He's very talented, that's for sure. It's phenomenal."

She said she's taken her sorority sisters there since then, and intends to take her exercise group there in the fall.

"He's a very outgoing, very generous, positive-thinking man," she said. "Whenever I take anyone to his house, I tell them it's a mystery trip. And they love it. They're absolutely thrilled."

Otto retired from teaching in the Ann Arbor Public Schools in 1980 and has been a musician since the age of five. For 50 years, he and his wife had given piano and organ lessons. Otto had lost interest in music during the final five years of his wife's long battle with cancer. Two days after she died in 2000, he got a call from Robert Walker, an organ-builder in Pennsylvania who said he had an organ to give him for as long as he wanted it.

With such an exquisite organ in his home - and 37 speakers descending from the rafters - he started practicing again. The concerts soon followed as Otto found that performing for fellow music lovers helped ease his loneliness.

Since then, more than 2,000 guests have attended his concerts. Between songs, he talks to his guests about the meaning behind the songs, or shares stories of old times.

These days Otto wakes up at 5:30 every morning, shaves, has breakfast. Then he practices the piano for two hours and the organ for three hours after that in an effort to get his hand and fingers back to where they were before the accident.

He's grateful to his therapists, friends and others who have helped in his recovery. Things are progressing so well, he's already booked three concerts for the first three Saturdays in September.